Economist.com | Social attitudes
Not quite right
From The Economist print edition

Americans seem to believe that they and their politics have got more conservative; but perhaps they haven’t.

HAS American politics moved to the right? [There is] a new survey of 2,116 Americans by YouGov, a British-based internet pollster. They seem to reveal a somewhat schizophrenic tension in the body politic. Many Americans think that they and their politicians have become more conservative; yet, when it comes to some fundamental questions, they have actually shifted to the left.

In terms of self-analysis, the direction is fairly clear. A plurality of Americans (41%) think they have not changed much; but, out of those who have changed, 30% have moved to the right, and only 19% to the left. The main swing rightwards has been among males, the old and, perhaps inevitably, Republicans. …

By a huge 42-19% margin, Americans think they are more liberal than their parents. …

For some conservatives, these numbers may cause a fear which coincidentally provides their movement with much of its impetus: that, though they are winning elections, they are losing at least some of the culture wars.

[link above has charts of survey results]

Taking the Stand: Pack the Supreme Court By Bruce Fein

President Bush would betray his popular mandate of last November if he neglects to nominate strong philosophical conservatives to the Supreme Court….

The Founding Fathers would not frown on President Bush’s philosophical packing of the Supreme Court in hopes of advancing a policy agenda. …

President Bush would mock the people’s verdict on Supreme Court justices in last November’s balloting if he neglects to appoint justices in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, and Bork. Bush unequivocally promised the same in his presidential campaign. In contrast, his defeated opponent, Senator John Kerry, pledged to appoint justices precommitted to celebrating the outlandish invention of a constitutional right to an abortion in Roe; and a homonymic interpretation of the Constitution epitomized by the same-sex marriage ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2003….

The American people thus confronted a stark choice, not an echo, regarding Supreme Court justices in decisively preferring Bush to Kerry. And Bush’s popular mandate to appoint Scalia–Thomas–Bork duplicates was reinforced by parallel voting for the U.S. Senate and 11 state referenda embracing the traditional understanding of marriage. …

President Bush would thus be guilty of bait-and-switch trickery if he reneged on his campaign promise to appoint philosophically conservative Supreme Court justices. …

President Bush’s detractors maintain that “moderates” in the mold of Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer can be trusted to eschew airbrush artistry or homonymic interpretations of the Constitution. But the detractors are wrong. …

[T]he so-called moderates acclaimed by Bush’s critics are in reality engines of new constitutional rights and powers operating with 10 as opposed to the 20 cylinders employed by Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They do not subscribe to the Constitution and its 27 amendments in accord with the original meaning and purpose of the authors.

59 Million voted against Bush. Another 79 million did not vote at all. Bush has NO mandate. mjh

The Writer’s Almanac

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” — Abraham Lincoln, Republican President

alibi . february 3 – 9, 2005

Thin Line
By Tim McGivern

Au contraire, indeed. If you caught President Bush’s live press conference on KOB-770 AM last week like I did, you heard this question from Jeff Gannon, Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for some outfit called Talon News. After the president selected “Jeff,” this question followed: “Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work—you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people—how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

Nevermind Bush’s fatuous response, according to mediamatters.org, “Talon News’ editor in chief, Bobby Eberle, is a Republican activist who served as a delegate to the 1996, 1998 and 2000 Texas Republican Conventions and to the 2000 national Republican Convention. In 1999, Eberle was recognized with a ’unanimously approved resolution of commendation by the Republican Party of Texas for service and dedication to the Republican cause.’ His biography on Talon’s website notes: ’Bobby has devoted considerable time and energy to the Republican effort’ and ’Bobby is a member of Texas Christian Coalition and Texas Right to Life.’ Eberle is also the president and CEO of GOPUSA.com, a ’conservative news, information, and design company dedicated to promoting conservative ideals’ that carries articles and commentary by Gannon and Talon News. GOPUSA is also affiliated with MillionsofAmericans.com, a conservative advocacy organization run by Bruce Eberle, a relative of Bobby Eberle and a conservative fundraising consultant.”

Judging by the content of Gannon’s question (no wonder Bush blissfully selected him), Talon’s purpose is no surprise. But, to make matters more disgraceful, it turns out Harry Reid never said anything about “soup lines.” Gannon got the line from America’s favorite drug addict himself, Rush Limbaugh.

Only hours later, Limbaugh told his audience: “I said earlier today in the program, shortly after we began, that somebody in the White House press corps listens to this program. It is Jeff Gannon from Talon News. Here is his question, which is a repeat, a rehash, of a precise point I made on this program yesterday. … I’m not upset by this, folks. I’m honored. I’m thrilled. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not accusing anybody of anything. I just think it’s fabulous here. Now, you may think that my ego is out of control. Au contraire, my friends. I have no ego. Not of the kind you’re talking about, anyway, or thinking about. No, what makes me think that the reporter was listening to the program is that Harry Reid never actually said ’soup lines.’ That is my characterization of their portrayal of America. He never actually said it.”

Of course, if the White House had any integrity, partisan hacks (What the hell is Talon news, anyway?) would not be selected to pose questions at a rare presidential press conference. But instead, this clown Gannon gets himself a seat in the front row. That’s just pitiful.
— [update] —
alibi . february 10 – 16, 2005 [follow this link for more links]

Total Freaking Loser!
Tim McGivern

In last week’s “Thin Line” I mentioned Jeff Gannon’s presumed reporting work at a Jan. 26 White House press conference where he borrowed a line from Rush Limbaugh and asked Dubya how he is going to deal with Democrats who divorce themselves from reality. It turns out Gannon is actually James “J.D.” Guckert and he’s such a freaking loser that he had to resign his job from Talon News — a GOP house organ pretending to be a real news agency — when the truth of his real identity was revealed. Guckert, while denying Gannon was a pseudonym, was barred from receiving a congressional press pass when he couldn’t convince authorities he represented a real news agency, which should have barred him from attending White House press conferences as well. But the Bush administration gave him a front row seat anyway, and now it’s alleged, according to the blog MediaCitizen, that other websites such as hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com, and militaryescortsm4m.com, were registered to the same owner as Gannon’s home Web site.

An article posted in Editor&Publisher has all the latest.

“Congresswoman Asks for Probe After ‘Gannon’ Quits WH Reporting Post”
By Joe Strupp

Meanwhile here’s an excerpt of a letter from Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) sent to the White House yesterday calling for an investigation into Gannon-Guckert’s credentials.

A Shrub Grows in Midland BY KAREN OLSSON, 6/25/1999 – The Texas Observer

According to Gary Ott, who was then a reporter for the Plainview Daily Herald, Bush … warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves [in 1978!]

[mjh: some will see this as a positive sign of Bush’s constancy; others as his inability to change/adapt and an old use of ‘crisis’.]

Editorial: Keeping Out of the Otero Mesa

This is part of a familiar scene in the West. The Bush administration has set its sights on dozens of ecologically valuable areas that could easily be declared off limits without imperiling the country’s supplies of oil and natural gas. As it is, 85 percent of the petroleum resources on public lands in the Western states are already leased or available for leasing. Any oil or gas found in the Otero grasslands is likely to make only a minuscule addition to America’s domestic energy supply, but could desecrate irreplaceable natural wealth.

A Democratic Blueprint for America’s Future by US Senator Ted Kennedy

I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like privatizing Social Security, redistributing the tax burden in the wrong direction, or packing the federal courts with reactionary judges. Those proposals were barely mentioned – or voted on – in an election dominated by memories of 9/11, fear of terrorism, the quagmire in Iraq, and relentlessly negative attacks on our Presidential candidate.

In an election so close, defeat has a thousand causes – and it is too easy to blame it on particular issues or tactics, or on the larger debate about values. In truth, we do not shrink from that debate. …

Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us. If the White House’s idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we’re not interested.

In fact, our values are still our greatest strength. Despite resistance, setbacks, and periods of backlash over the years, our values have moved us closer to the ideal with which America began – that all people are created equal. And when Democrats say “all,” we mean “all.”

We have an Administration that falsely hypes almost every issue as a crisis. They did it on Iraq, and they are doing it now on Social Security. They exploit the politics of fear and division, while ours is a politics of hope and unity.

In the face of their tactics, we cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again, and deserve to lose. As I have said on other occasions, the last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.

Today, I propose a progressive vision for America, a vision that Democrats must fight for in the months and years ahead – a vision rooted in our basic values of opportunity, fairness, tolerance, and respect for each other.

These founding beliefs are still the essence of the American dream today. …
—–
An Address by Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the National Press Club
January 12, 2005